


vasa argentea

by princejake



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jewish John Silver, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 14:39:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17408789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princejake/pseuds/princejake
Summary: On the return journey from Charleston to Nassau, Flint contemplates identities and appearances, and questions the masks that John Silver presents to the world.





	vasa argentea

**Author's Note:**

> No beta, I churned this out over the course of a few days and decided I don't feel like doing any more with it. First fic of 2019 and first time writing Flint pov! Also I can't seem to stop fixating on characters' jewelry, send help.
> 
> (Warning for brief allusions to anti-Semitism; character death referred to in the tags is Miranda)

Flint watches what remains of Charleston crumble to dust at his command and feels nothing. The cannon fire ringing in his ears is indistinguishable from the icy-numb ringing deep in his soul, that reverberation of grief that struck at the sight of Miranda’s body on the floor and has been echoing within him ever since. Flint feels hollowed out, as if all his capacity for emotion died with that gunshot. He feels as if he will never feel anything again.

Then Howell appears on deck, hands and forearms stained red, and the first words out of his mouth are _Mister Silver_ , and something struggles to life in Flint’s chest.

Silver is unconscious on the table where they left him. Flint stares at his pale, pale face, at the empty air beneath his left knee, at the pool of blood slowly seeping into the planks of the ship. Billy is talking, explaining how it was Silver’s actions that twice prevented Vane’s men from taking the ship -- along with all their lives.

_He saved us_ , Flint thinks without comprehending. _He risked his life to save us_. The notion is incompatible with everything he understood John Silver to be up until this moment. He turns it over and over in his mind in an effort to make it fit. Somehow, the self-serving thief who grinned at him across Eleanor Guthrie’s desk all those weeks ago and declared that he had _an exceptionally low tolerance for pain_ is the same man lying before him now, mutilated and near-death for the sake of his crew. For _Flint’s_ sake.

The cold yawning chasm inside Flint is illuminated by a flare of tenderness so sharp and sudden it nearly makes him sick. He digs his nails into the palms of his hands. “Will he live?”

Howell gestures helplessly. “It’s too early to tell. Thankfully I was able to operate quickly, but he’s lost a lot of blood. He needs rest, and the wound needs to be kept clean.”

Flint nods, and doesn’t think twice before giving the order to move Silver to his cabin. It takes four men to carry him such that his leg remains unjostled. Muldoon is among them, and before he leaves, he turns to Flint and pulls something from his pocket.

“Doctor said to take these off him, for safety.” It’s the jewelry Silver had taken to wearing after they captured the warship. Muldoon hands it over almost solemnly, a kind of private ceremony taking place. “He’ll probably want them back, when he wakes.” His voice sounds confident, but his eyes betray his uncertainty, the fear there that Silver may never wake at all.

Flint closes his fingers around the metal, the edge of the cross smooth and hard against his skin. “When he wakes,” he repeats.

The necklace and ring go into one of the drawers of Flint’s desk. Howell comes round three times a day to change the bandages at first, then less frequently. Silver’s face gradually regains its color, but his eyes stay closed, even when he tosses and turns and mumbles things in his semi-conscious state that Flint does his best not to hear -- for the most part the words don’t seem to be English, anyway.

On their fifth day at sea, the men call a vote to elect a new quartermaster, apparently emboldened by Howell’s assessment that Silver is no longer in immediate danger of death by infection. The vote is unanimous. Flint doesn’t have a say, of course, but he has no objections either, so it really doesn’t matter.

They dock in Tortuga, just long enough to resupply and catch some of the gossip that’s been flowing freely in the wake of their destruction of Charleston. The legend of Captain Flint has grown even more dark and monstrous, and when Flint walks down the street he hears the whispers follow him and is filled with a grim satisfaction completely devoid of pleasure. No use, anymore, in pretending himself separate from the terrifying figure they speak of. Miranda is dead, and James McGraw with her, and Flint is all that remains, and they are right to be afraid.

He also hears about Eleanor’s arrest, the loss of yet another partner cutting him only briefly before the fresh pain subsides under the misery already there. He has no energy for it. He thinks, somewhat desperately, that at least he will not have to return to Nassau and explain to Eleanor why their plans failed. He thinks, somewhat desperately, that he is more alone than he has ever been.

On his way back to the ship, he passes by a jeweler’s stall in the market. A small silver stud glints at him from one of the racks. He buys it impulsively, not stopping to let himself wonder why or to assign too much weight to the decision.

A day later, Silver wakes and tells Flint about the gold, and the last soft embers of emotion Flint had within him sputter and die.

***

Silver remains confined to the window seat in the days that follow, lest he reopen his wound. A bitter, hateful part of Flint -- the part of him that flares with rage every time he remembers how Silver is a fucking thief and a _liar_ , lied about the gold, is _still lying_ about his role in concealing it -- wants to put Silver out of his cabin and leave him to recuperate elsewhere. But he knows it wouldn’t do for the crew to see their quartermaster like this, red-eyed and exhausted, incapable of even taking a shit without help.

For his part, Silver seems determined to refuse as much assistance as possible. He insists on changing his bandages himself, only letting Howell near his leg long enough to confirm the absence of any complications. His hair is growing longer and more disheveled, accompanied by the onset of what will undoubtedly soon be a very messy beard, but when Flint breaks the silence between them with a curt offer to hold a mirror for him so he can shave, Silver answers with a grimace that not only conveys his feelings on allowing Flint to help him, but further suggests that he’s aware of how feral he’s beginning to look and that this is the entire point. Flint doesn’t bring it up again.

Yet the physical realities of Silver’s situation persist despite his best efforts. Usually he waits until Howell’s daily visit to relieve himself, thereby sparing both Flint and himself that uncomfortable intimacy, but sometimes he has no choice. Flint avoids Silver’s eyes in those moments, and tries to touch him no more than he has to. Not out of disgust, but from knowledge that Silver himself finds the act humiliating.

If Flint is honest, he finds it extremely difficult to maintain his anger at Silver when he’s reminded that nothing he could possibly do in retaliation would be worse than what Silver is already going through.

Once, taking the bedpan away, Flint quite inadvertently catches sight of Silver’s cock. His first confused thought is that something is _wrong_ with it. An instant later he realizes what he’s seen, and hurriedly turns away before Silver notices where his attention has gone.

That same night Flint recalls something he had wholly forgotten about in the aftermath of Silver’s confession. He waits until Silver is asleep before opening the drawer where the jewelry Muldoon had passed off to him still sits patiently. The cross is still very much a cross, exactly the same as it was a week ago, unchanged by Flint’s accidental discovery that his new quartermaster has been a Jew this entire time.

It’s hardly a surprise that Silver would lie about his identity. After all, it’s not the first time -- Flint knew that story about the orphanage was a fiction as soon as he heard it. He didn’t particularly care, assumed Silver had his reasons for disguising the truth, whatever they were. Now for the first time he considers that those reasons might be ones he understands intimately.

Flint has lived so much of his life bound to secrecy, painstakingly hiding that part of himself that others would revile him for if they knew. It is necessary, and it is also like slowly taking a knife to his own flesh, carving himself bit by bit into something unrecognizable. Did Silver feel the same, every time he looked down at himself wearing the emblem of a faith he finds no comfort in, one whose followers have tried relentlessly to exterminate Silver’s own people?

Eventually Flint leaves both the necklace and the ring at Silver’s bedside and retires to his own bunk. He is angry at Silver still for betraying him, and somehow angrier now from the awareness that they could have been more for each other, and he is tired by his own anger, and he no longer wishes to think about any of this.

In the morning the ring is on Silver’s finger. The cross is nowhere to be found. There’s only one place Silver could have disposed of it, and Flint imagines it sinking into the depths of the Atlantic, dragging with it whatever old stories and disguises Silver saw fit to rid himself of. Whether the brooding, wild-haired creature who now occupies Flint’s cabin is closer to the truth or just a new disguise, Flint cannot say.

***

They land in Nassau tomorrow morning, and Flint is making preparations.

Between the full moon and the lantern placed on his desk he has plenty of light to see by as he scrapes the razor across his scalp. The boards beneath his feet shift with the rocking of the sea, but Flint’s weight is planted and his hands are steady. Tufts of hair litter the desk and spill onto the floor.

Miranda loved his hair. She insisted on trimming it for him every so often when he’d return home between voyages. He would sit at the table while she worked, and now and then her nails would scratch soothingly over the nape of his neck, and she would be humming whatever piece of music was in her head that day, and the sunlight would stream in through the front windows and turn the whole room warm and golden.

Flint’s cabin is chilly, and the only sound is the ever-present creaking of the ship. Flint applies one final stroke of the blade and sets the razor aside so he can pick up the small mirror. He turns toward the window for a better look at his handiwork.

In the glaring moonlight the curve of his newly-shorn head glows pearly white. Flint studies its harshness, the dark hollows under his eyes, the lines etched into his face. He looks like a skeleton. He looks how he feels, barren and spectral, a shade left behind to haunt the world of the living now that everything human in him has passed on.

The stud in his ear stands out, the gold providing a too-brilliant contrast against the overall bleakness of his appearance. Flint thinks of the earring he bought in Tortuga, stuffed into his coat pocket and abandoned.

He makes the switch. The silver is still bright against his skin, but more subdued. Its gleam reminds him of light reflected in the eyes of a dead thing -- cold and false, presenting the illusion of life with nothing underneath. Appropriate.

Flint rolls the bit of gold in his palm for a moment, then walks to the window on the opposite side of the room from Silver’s corner. He eases it open as quietly as possible. The waves below are small but insistent, pushing ceaselessly against the hull, spraying their salt into the night air. Flint closes his eyes for a moment and listens. The gentle slap of water on wood sounds the same in Padstow, or London, or the Bahamas, or anywhere else in the world. Wherever he goes and whatever he becomes, the sea at least remains unchanged.

_It pays us, and then it claims us,_ he hear Gates say in a memory. _Swallows us whole as if we’d never been here at all._

James McGraw had told Miranda of his desire to return Flint to the sea, but Miranda is dead, and McGraw is gone, and Flint is left standing here gazing down at the water.

He balances the earring on his thumb and uses his forefinger to flick it out into the open air. It spins there shining for a heartbeat before it vanishes, lost forever beneath the sparkling, freezing waves.

“Captain?”

Silver’s voice floats across the room. He’s sitting up with his spine twisted so he can peer at Flint over his shoulder. He blinks slowly as he takes in Flint’s shaved head, his position by the open window. “What are you doing?”

The shadows cast by the tangles of Silver’s hair obscure nearly the whole of his face. If Flint is a skeleton now, then Silver is an animal, untamed and bristling. His eyes, though, are clearly visible in the moonlight. They look wide, and questioning, and young.

Flint wants to say, _Putting on a new face. Same as you._ He wants to say, _Don’t look at me like that._

Instead he says in a flat voice, “It was time for a change.” He shuts the window, snuffs out the lantern on the desk, and puts the image of Silver’s wide blue eyes out of his head.


End file.
